In this updated and remastered Southern Mysteries Classic, we revisit the strange disappearance of Connie Franklin and the mystery of the man who returned from the dead. In 1929, five men in Stone County, Arkansas, were charged with the murder of Franklin, a drifter who had vanished from the Ozarks. A teenage girl said he had been brutally attacked and his body burned in the woods, and investigators believed they had found his charred remains. Then, just days before the murder trial began, a man appeared claiming to be Connie Franklin. The bizarre case drew reporters from across the country and became known as the Arkansas Ghost Trial.
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Episode Sources
- Brooks Blevins, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South, University of Illinois Press, 2012.
- Brooks Blevins, “The Arkansas Ghost Trial: The Connie Franklin Case and the Ozarks in the National Media,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 3, Autumn 2009, pp. 245–271.
- Encyclopedia of Arkansas, “Connie Franklin (Alleged Murder of).”
- Deane Allen, “Man at Batesville Identified as Franklin,” Arkansas Democrat, Dec. 8, 1929, pp. 1, 8.
- “Connie Franklin Reported Living,” Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 5, 1929, p. 1.
- “Five Indicted as Climax to Murder Probe,” Arkansas Democrat, Nov. 24, 1929, pp. 1, 6.
- Fletcher Chenout, “Four Cleared of Slaying Franklin,” Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 20, 1929, pp. 1, 7.
- Carl Olsson, “Startling Franklin Case Development Predicted,” Arkansas Democrat, Dec. 15, 1929, p. 1.
- TIME, “The States: Arkansas Vindicated,” Dec. 30, 1929.
- “From Baxter Bulletin Files,” Baxter County History, Vol. 7, 1981, pp. 41–42.
- Steven Teske, Unvarnished Arkansas: The Naked Truth about Nine Famous Arkansans, Butler Center Books, 2012.
- University of Illinois Press, “Q&A with Ghost of the Ozarks Author Brooks Blevins,” July 6, 2012.
- KSMU Ozarks Public Radio, “Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Scandal in the Hills,” April 30, 2012.
- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 11, 1942, retrospective account of the Connie Franklin case.
Episode Music
Out of the Mines, courtesy of Ross Gentry, Asheville, North Carolina.